In a Heartbeat
by Dr. Annie McCarty-Sloan
Summary: Addison Montgomery-Shepherd has requested that her protégée, Annie McCarty, be transferred to Seattle Grace. Will she survive the drama within the halls of the hospital?


Annie groaned as the sunlight that filtered through her eyelids became too bright to ignore. She blinked and sighed. Blurry vision, no recollection of the night before and a headache usually equaled Annie, a man, and a very large bottle of tequila. Annie had to bite back a whimper when she moved her head.

"I really need to stop drinking tequila." She muttered. "And stop sleeping on the couch; especially not before work…first day of work…Addison is going to kill me."

That was when Annie noticed what she was wearing, or rather, what she wasn't wearing scattered across her living room floor. So there was a man. Tequila always seemed to make everyone feel... better.

"Definitely a man." She said as her body became aware enough to recognize the dull ache between her thighs. Yep, there was sex. Lots of good sex.

She tried to cast her mind back to the night before, lifting a slender hand to massage her left temple. A few memories came back through her concentration; Addison had encouraged her to go out in the town before she had to go to work the next day. She met up with Chief Webber to for a tour around the hospital and had a brief talk about her contract and then there had been the bar that was across the street, nice and cozy, and that had to have been where the tequila entered the picture; many, many shots of tequila. And then some hot man…who must've still be here.

She shifted her head on the couch and saw the naked man lying on her floor. Still here. Annie heard her pager buzz under her couch pillow.

Looking at her pager Annie cursed and sat up. She pulled the blanket off of her and the unknown man, pausing only a second to enjoy her last glimpse of his sculpted body before dropping a pillow onto it to shield it from her gaze. He grunted and shifted slightly.

Annie wrapped herself in the blanket, and gave the man a hard nudge with her toe.

"I'm sorry, but you really need to go, it's not you it's me and my boss and...you just really need to go."

His eyes open, eyelashes fluttering as he attempts to clear the haze obscuring the blue. The low groan escaping from his throat announces that he too is feeling the after effects of too much alcohol; scotch, in his case.

"This is…" He starts, passing a pink lacy bra up to Annie.

"Not something I would usually do but it happened," she interrupted, snatching the bra from his grip. "Again, you really need to go."

"Why don't we just pick up where we left off?" He smirks, obviously recovering enough to hope for more sex.

"No, seriously I have to go. I'm late, which isn't the best way to thank your boss who pulled almost all of her strings to have you work with her again, so…" Annie cuts off, hoping he will get the hint and leave. Luckily, he seems to understand that she's serious, and begins to dress.

"So…nice place," he says, the smirk back in full force. "No bed though. You just move here?" The smirk gets even more pronounced as he continues, "you know, for not usually doing this you were pretty willing, must have been pretty eager last night. You could give me a tour of the rest of the house. I tend to do great work on all surfaces and furniture."

"I moved here last week to work with an old friend. It's just temporary until I have a steady income and enough to afford a new place." Annie shook her head, trying to focus her still fuzzy brain. "You know what, never mind, we don't need to exchange the details. I'm not interested in your work anywhere else."

She sighed, and began to think of a line for getting rid of one night stands, "Ok, I'm about to go upstairs and get ready to leave. Alright? And when I get back down here, I won't see you here. So…um….goodbye…ummm M-Mi-"

The man looks up as he buttons up his shirt, a little shocked at his abrupt dismissal. The corner of his mouth creeps up as he realizes this girl might have more in common with him than just the night they had shared before. He had delivered a line very similar to hers many times in the past.

Finally realizing that she was struggling to remember his name, he extended a hand, using his looks in full force, "Mark."

"Mark. Right. Annie." She smiles awkwardly, shaking his hand.

"Annie," he repeated.

"Yeah," she exhaled, releasing his hand to give a quick wave before dashing up a cluttered staircase.

"Nice meeting you." She yelled from somewhere up stairs.

"The pleasures all mine Annie," he muttered before exiting the house, leaving Annie to her buisness.

"Annie It's so good to see you!" Addison yelled as she ran up to Annie giving her a hug.

Addison quickly retreated and suppressed a yawn. It was still fairly early in the morning but she had a surgery to be performed at eight and she had insisted on meeting her protégée before that.

"Is it, because right now I most likely look like complete crap?" Annie replied not making an effort to brush the bitterness from her voice. Addison sighed. Annie McCarty was one of the best when it came to the pediatrics field, second to her in the northwest, and one of the youngest attending in the United States at 26 years. Addison had been her resident when Annie was an intern and it had been very easy to see that her abilities were needed to help save the lives of newborns and toddlers. It hadn't been hard to convince the chief to ask for a transfer when her looked through her career record. And after a few months she was finally in Seattle.

"Of course it is. Well, your first shift as an attending surgeon in our hospital will begin in thirty minutes. Are you excited? No, I'm sure you aren't. Well….Dr. Bailey, one of our residents, will most likely assign one of her interns to accompany you." she could almost sense the answer coming.

"Oh yeah, how could I forget, this apart of the whole teaching hospital thing, right?" Annie sarcastically asked. Addison watched Annie tuck a stray of her straight blond hair that had managed to escape the messy bun she had put the rest into behind her ear and roll her eyes. She was wearing a white blouse and a fitting black skirt that stopped just above her knees and her signature heels. Knowing it was a bad idea but deciding to ask nevertheless Addison attempted to start a conversation with her.

"So, still wearing the heels to work?"

"Why is there a problem?" Annie said defensively.

Addison watched as she took her purse from the table, grabbed the lab coat she had just handed her and left his office without another word. Addison sighed, No one, could ever get in-between that girl and her shoes.

"Hurry, we're going to be late!" Izzie dragged Meredith across the parking space, followed by Alex who had just smashed the doors of their car shut. They practically ran into Mark and Derek who had just arrived as well.

"Late for rounds already? Smells like trouble." Mark smirked, earning a smash against the chest from Addison, who was doing paper work at the front desk. Mark noticed the glances Addison was shooting between Derek and Meredith but he decided to keep his mouth shut for once.

They had all just exchanged their hellos when Miranda Bailey marched in, followed by the five interns.

"You were already late so help me if I hear anyone of you complaining i will make the rest of your internship hell, you do as told and you get out of my sight before I forget myself, is that clear?"

The interns nodded, Meredith and George seemed quite scared, while Alex and Christina seemed to take the whole speech rather unperturbed and Izzie didn't really seem to have listened. Bailey got all of their attention though as she assigned them to their tasks for the day.

"Stevens, you're with Dr. Shepherd. Karev, you're with Montgomery-Shepherd. Yang, you're with Dr. Burke. O'Malley, have fun at plastics with Dr. Sloan and Grey – you're with Dr, McCarty."

The interns looked at each other quizzically but before Meredith could ask a cool voice from behind them said:

"That would be me."

They turned around and stared at the new attending. But it wasn't only the interns who were obviously surprised by her.

"Hey Annie." They suddenly heard Mark say.

"Mark, you work here?" the blonde woman asked regretting his answer.

"Wait you know each other?" Addison asked looking at Annie.

"Great! Now get to work!" Bailey snapped at the interns who quickly teamed up with their attendings. Annie nodded her head toward the elevators to Meredith, before she started off into the direction of the elevator herself, only to be stopped next to Mark.

"Ok, here's two ways you are going to deal with this. Number one: Stop staring at me. Number two: Stop drooling it's not really attractive." With that Annie was off, leaving Meredith no choice but to follow her. Mark, despite her icy comment, couldn't get his eyes off her until the elevator's doors had closed. He barely heard Addison chuckle and Derek leave a remark while they left. All he could think about was how well the lab coat had hugged her shoulders, how her skirt had revealed just the right amount of leg and how her blouse had made no effort to leave her figure to anyone's imagination. Sure he saw it all before and it wasn't that he had never seen a beautiful woman before – but how she was able to dismiss him not only once but twice now in one day really intrigued him. She wasn't like any other woman he had met before – she was a going to be an actual challenge. And he wanted to be the one to achieve it without having her half passed out.

"Erm…Dr. Sloan?" George shifted uncomfortably next to him, wishing his assigned attending would just take that new attendings advice and stop staring at the spot she had left minutes ago.

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